Flight number record

DL 818

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: ATL → DFW
Departs: 22:59
Flights: 348
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 818, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 818 lands a B−, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

On time

78.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 336 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.45%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 348 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When DL 818 flies

DL 818 flies ATL to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 22:59, used on 50 of 348 flights, with 23:05 (46 flights) and 22:57 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 22:5950 flights14.4%
Departs 23:0546 flights13.2%
Departs 22:5738 flights10.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 22:59 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 818 runs 8 points better at 78.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 818 next to ATL to DFW

Every carrier on ATL to DFW combined arrived on time 74.3% of the time across 6,698 flights, so DL 818 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,791 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.

DL 818 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 818thin sample	348	78.9%	58 min	3.45%	B−
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DFW	2,791	75.4%	57 min	2.51%	B
All carriers on ATL–DFW	6,698	74.3%	80 min	2.76%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 818 quarter by quarter

DL 818 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 84.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 70.3%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 87 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Jul–Sep 202575 flights70.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights77.5%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights84.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights82.0%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 818 did best on Tuesday at 89.1% on time and worst on Sunday at 68.8%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 818 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 4,118 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
3%

38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 4,118 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 4,118 delay minutes reported on DL 818.

Cancellations run at 3.45%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 731 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

Every one of the 348 flights under DL 818 in the data flew ATL to DFW. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 348 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking DL 818

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 818: 3.45% of its 348 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

Where to go next

A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures